Approach to the Preconscious

Summary

The talk presents a sustained philosophical and psychological inquiry into consciousness, treating it as one of the most difficult subjects for the mind to study because the mind must use itself to examine itself. The speaker argues that consciousness is commonly experienced as a familiar power of knowing, remembering, thinking, and understanding, yet its true substance remains elusive. Throughout the discussion, consciousness is described in multiple ways: as a universal life principle, as an individual expression, as a divine or God-like energy, and as a capacity that human beings possess but do not fully realize. A central theme is the tension between universality and individuality. The speaker suggests that consciousness may be diffused through all things, but it manifests differently in plants, animals, atoms, and human beings. This leads to the conclusion that consciousness is both universal and particular, producing infinite diversity rather than uniformity. The speaker contrasts this with social conformity, arguing that individuality may be more important than commonly assumed. The Greek view is introduced as a major reference point: consciousness is universal, while mind and personality are the differentiating factors. In this framework, the body, emotions, and lower mental equipment shape how universal consciousness is interpreted. The talk then moves into a long comparison between Western and Eastern traditions. In classical and medieval Western thought, consciousness is often treated as something lost, obscured, or damaged through descent into matter, desire, or original sin. Liberation therefore requires discipline, renunciation, repentance, or moral restoration. By contrast, Eastern systems such as Buddhism, Vedanta, and Taoism are presented as teaching that consciousness is the ultimate reality, and that ordinary waking life is actually a kind of unconsciousness or illusion. The speaker emphasizes that what people call consciousness may in fact be only sensory reaction, mental pressure, or commotion, while true consciousness is a higher, more stable state beyond conflict, ignorance, and fear. A substantial portion of the talk examines hypnosis, regression, sleep, and memory as practical illustrations of layered consciousness. The speaker argues that human beings appear to have at least two memory systems: waking memory and subjective or subconscious memory. Under hypnosis, a person can be made to remember or forget, and can even be regressed to earlier life stages, though not perfectly, since some growth continues beneath the surface. These examples are used to show that the present point of awareness is always contemporary and that the past cannot be directly re-experienced without blocking the current conscious state. Sleep and dreaming are treated as further evidence that consciousness continues in hidden forms, processing psychic pressure without objective awareness. The speaker also develops a major metaphor: human beings live at the bottom of a well. This image represents the limited world of sensory perception, social convention, authority, and habitual values. In this condition, people mistake their constrained environment for reality. The philosopher Plato is invoked through the allegory of the cave or well, and Socrates is presented as the figure who dared to look beyond the familiar world and was punished for it. The metaphor is extended to saints, prophets, mystics, and teachers who have climbed out of the well, seen a larger reality, and returned to tell others. Their experiences are often dismissed as madness because those still inside the well lack the language and conceptual framework to understand them. The talk repeatedly returns to the idea that ordinary life is a kind of illusion or dream, not because it is unreal in a physical sense, but because it is a distorted valuation of reality. War, crime, stress, and social conflict are described as normalized conditions of the well-dwellers. True consciousness, by contrast, would be a state of fact, peace, and eternal now, beyond motion and polarization. The speaker suggests that the goal of spiritual discipline, mysticism, and philosophical inquiry is to climb out of the well into a state of pure consciousness, where reality is no longer filtered through fear, opinion, or sensory limitation. In conclusion, the talk argues that consciousness is not merely a mental function but the deepest reality from which life emerges and to which it returns. Human beings are portrayed as beings in transition, groping toward a fuller state of awareness that may already surround them. The path forward involves inward discipline, detachment from illusion, and the courage to seek truth beyond the familiar world. The speaker leaves the audience with the suggestion that consciousness is both the mystery and the destiny of existence, and that the ordinary world may be only the beginning of a much larger reality.